This chapter presents a brief conclusion which summarizes the main argument: that fully legitimate, deliberative, and democratic decision making can only be of the macro kind, not the micro. It poses ...
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This chapter presents a brief conclusion which summarizes the main argument: that fully legitimate, deliberative, and democratic decision making can only be of the macro kind, not the micro. It poses questions for future research and answers a hypothetical question from the Leicester case, giving a group of protestors six reasons to think that the outcome of the citizens’ jury was legitimate, and one reason — its restricted, local scope — to think that it was not.Less

Questions and conclusions

John Parkinson

Published in print: 2006-06-15

This chapter presents a brief conclusion which summarizes the main argument: that fully legitimate, deliberative, and democratic decision making can only be of the macro kind, not the micro. It poses questions for future research and answers a hypothetical question from the Leicester case, giving a group of protestors six reasons to think that the outcome of the citizens’ jury was legitimate, and one reason — its restricted, local scope — to think that it was not.

Deliberative Democracy and Beyond takes a critical tour through recent democratic theory, beginning with the deliberative turn that occurred around 1990. The essence of this turn is that ...
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Deliberative Democracy and Beyond takes a critical tour through recent democratic theory, beginning with the deliberative turn that occurred around 1990. The essence of this turn is that democratic legitimacy is to be found in authentic deliberation among those affected by a collective decision. While the deliberative turn was initially a challenge to established institutions and models of democracy, it was soon assimilated by these same institutions and models. Drawing a distinction between liberal constitutionalism and discursive democracy, the author criticizes the former and advocates the latter. He argues that a defensible theory of democracy should be critical of established power, pluralistic, reflexive in questioning established traditions, transnational in its capacity to extend across state boundaries, ecological, and dynamic in its openness to changing constraints upon, and opportunities for, democratization.Less

Deliberative Democracy and Beyond : Liberals, Critics, Contestations

John S. Dryzek

Published in print: 2002-01-03

Deliberative Democracy and Beyond takes a critical tour through recent democratic theory, beginning with the deliberative turn that occurred around 1990. The essence of this turn is that democratic legitimacy is to be found in authentic deliberation among those affected by a collective decision. While the deliberative turn was initially a challenge to established institutions and models of democracy, it was soon assimilated by these same institutions and models. Drawing a distinction between liberal constitutionalism and discursive democracy, the author criticizes the former and advocates the latter. He argues that a defensible theory of democracy should be critical of established power, pluralistic, reflexive in questioning established traditions, transnational in its capacity to extend across state boundaries, ecological, and dynamic in its openness to changing constraints upon, and opportunities for, democratization.

Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to ...
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Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to ‘track the truth’, where purely factual issues are all that is at stake. Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, however, and then it is essential to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. In this book, Goodin offers a solution: ‘democratic deliberation within’. Building on models of ordinary conversational dynamics, he suggests that people simply imagine themselves in the position of various other people they have heard or read about and ask, ‘What would they say about this proposal’? Informing the democratic imaginary then becomes the key to making deliberations more reflective—more empathetic, more considered, and more expansive across time and distance. After an introductory chapter, the book has eleven further chapters arranged in three sections: Preference Democracy (two chapters); Belief Democracy (four chapters); and Value Democracy (five chapters, including a conclusion).Less

Reflective Democracy

Robert E. Goodin

Published in print: 2003-02-13

Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to ‘track the truth’, where purely factual issues are all that is at stake. Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, however, and then it is essential to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. In this book, Goodin offers a solution: ‘democratic deliberation within’. Building on models of ordinary conversational dynamics, he suggests that people simply imagine themselves in the position of various other people they have heard or read about and ask, ‘What would they say about this proposal’? Informing the democratic imaginary then becomes the key to making deliberations more reflective—more empathetic, more considered, and more expansive across time and distance. After an introductory chapter, the book has eleven further chapters arranged in three sections: Preference Democracy (two chapters); Belief Democracy (four chapters); and Value Democracy (five chapters, including a conclusion).

Mediatic representation has become an integral part of politics and policy. The dominance of incident-oriented media formats has led students of politics and media to fear a trend of ‘dumbing down’: ...
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Mediatic representation has become an integral part of politics and policy. The dominance of incident-oriented media formats has led students of politics and media to fear a trend of ‘dumbing down’: the privileging of style over content. This book takes issue with the ‘dumbing down’ thesis both on theoretical and empirical grounds. In particular it investigates how an authoritative governance is possible in crisis-ridden circumstances in a mediatized environment. Maarten Hajer comes up with a communicative understanding of authority, creating a new basis for an authoritative governance in a world marked by political and institutional fragmentation. Extending his discourse-analytical framework, Hajer uses both discursive and dramaturgical methods to study policy makers in their struggle for authority. Three elaborate case studies provide a wealth of details of the dynamics of authority in today's mediatized polity and the peculiar role of crisis and incidents in this. The message of the book is that in the age of mediatization governance needs to be performed. Hajer illuminates contours of a new authoritative governance that encompass different elements than usually get represented in the media or indeed in textbooks on media studies, public policy, or governance. The book shows new ways to recombine traditional government of standing institutions to notions of network governance. The book thus provides new ideas about authoritative governance which is based on the need to actively create relations with a variety of publics.Less

Authoritative Governance : Policy Making in the Age of Mediatization

Maarten A. Hajer

Published in print: 2009-08-06

Mediatic representation has become an integral part of politics and policy. The dominance of incident-oriented media formats has led students of politics and media to fear a trend of ‘dumbing down’: the privileging of style over content. This book takes issue with the ‘dumbing down’ thesis both on theoretical and empirical grounds. In particular it investigates how an authoritative governance is possible in crisis-ridden circumstances in a mediatized environment. Maarten Hajer comes up with a communicative understanding of authority, creating a new basis for an authoritative governance in a world marked by political and institutional fragmentation. Extending his discourse-analytical framework, Hajer uses both discursive and dramaturgical methods to study policy makers in their struggle for authority. Three elaborate case studies provide a wealth of details of the dynamics of authority in today's mediatized polity and the peculiar role of crisis and incidents in this. The message of the book is that in the age of mediatization governance needs to be performed. Hajer illuminates contours of a new authoritative governance that encompass different elements than usually get represented in the media or indeed in textbooks on media studies, public policy, or governance. The book shows new ways to recombine traditional government of standing institutions to notions of network governance. The book thus provides new ideas about authoritative governance which is based on the need to actively create relations with a variety of publics.

Nowhere are the difficulties of protecting both the right to enjoy one’s culture and the right to sexual equality protections better illuminated than in the case of post-Apartheid South Africa. This ...
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Nowhere are the difficulties of protecting both the right to enjoy one’s culture and the right to sexual equality protections better illuminated than in the case of post-Apartheid South Africa. This chapter discusses efforts to reconcile constitutional recognition of African customary law (and to a lesser extent Muslim personal law) with formal protections for women’s sexual equality. It also presents the debate and consultations over the reform of African customary marriage (in the late 1990s in South Africa) as a good example of open-ended democratic deliberation grounded in principles of democratic legitimacy and political inclusion. It is this kind of model of deliberation that offers up the best solution to conflicts of culture, including those over gender roles, in socially plural, liberal constitutional democracies.Less

Gender and Cultural Justice in South Africa

Monique Deveaux

Published in print: 2006-11-30

Nowhere are the difficulties of protecting both the right to enjoy one’s culture and the right to sexual equality protections better illuminated than in the case of post-Apartheid South Africa. This chapter discusses efforts to reconcile constitutional recognition of African customary law (and to a lesser extent Muslim personal law) with formal protections for women’s sexual equality. It also presents the debate and consultations over the reform of African customary marriage (in the late 1990s in South Africa) as a good example of open-ended democratic deliberation grounded in principles of democratic legitimacy and political inclusion. It is this kind of model of deliberation that offers up the best solution to conflicts of culture, including those over gender roles, in socially plural, liberal constitutional democracies.

This chapter explores the context of the cases, setting out the history of patient involvement initiatives and deliberative experiments in the UK. It highlights the antipathy to interest groups and ...
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This chapter explores the context of the cases, setting out the history of patient involvement initiatives and deliberative experiments in the UK. It highlights the antipathy to interest groups and the ‘research orientation’ of those experiments, and the effects that orientation has had on limiting the scope and agenda of deliberation. It argues that whether deliberation occurs at the local level or at the centre matters a great deal, but that deliberative experiments tend to be at least as much about resource battles between the centre and the periphery as responding to citizens’ needs.Less

Health politics and deliberative techniques

John Parkinson

Published in print: 2006-06-15

This chapter explores the context of the cases, setting out the history of patient involvement initiatives and deliberative experiments in the UK. It highlights the antipathy to interest groups and the ‘research orientation’ of those experiments, and the effects that orientation has had on limiting the scope and agenda of deliberation. It argues that whether deliberation occurs at the local level or at the centre matters a great deal, but that deliberative experiments tend to be at least as much about resource battles between the centre and the periphery as responding to citizens’ needs.

This chapter discusses the second broad solution to the legitimacy problems: sharing arguments through the media. It sets out the structural features of the news media and shows how they filter out ...
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This chapter discusses the second broad solution to the legitimacy problems: sharing arguments through the media. It sets out the structural features of the news media and shows how they filter out certain kinds of arguments and issues, using the example of a deliberative poll. It argues that successful argument sharing (or publicity) depends on the salience of the issue, but in such cases, small-scale deliberative processes can provide a useful focal point for coverage of all the arguments. ‘Manufacturing’ salience can lead to distortion of the issue and arguments.Less

Deliberation as drama: publicity and accountability

John Parkinson

Published in print: 2006-06-15

This chapter discusses the second broad solution to the legitimacy problems: sharing arguments through the media. It sets out the structural features of the news media and shows how they filter out certain kinds of arguments and issues, using the example of a deliberative poll. It argues that successful argument sharing (or publicity) depends on the salience of the issue, but in such cases, small-scale deliberative processes can provide a useful focal point for coverage of all the arguments. ‘Manufacturing’ salience can lead to distortion of the issue and arguments.

Most philosophical and social scientific work that discusses reason starts from a picture of reason that treats the activity of reasoning as a means of navigating our environment in the pursuit of ...
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Most philosophical and social scientific work that discusses reason starts from a picture of reason that treats the activity of reasoning as a means of navigating our environment in the pursuit of various ends. This book offers an alternative, social picture of reasoning that pictures the activity of reasoning as a way of interacting with others that is reciprocal and responsive. On this picture, reasoning is to be contrasted with other forms of interaction, such as commanding or deferring. Reasoning is characterized as a social, ongoing activity that involves people inviting others to take what they say as speaking for them as well. So understood, it is a species of casual conversation, not primarily a form of calculation. Part I lays out the basic features of the social picture, and discusses the kind of authority it generates and the nature of casual conversation, of which reasoning is a form. Part II discusses the characteristic norms of three nested activities: casual conversation, reasoning and engaged reasoning. Part III discusses the principles that guide those reasoning as they respond to invitations that their reasoning partners make. These include principles that require attention to a form of self-preservation called integrity, and the connection between our ends and their means.Less

Reasoning : A Social Picture

Anthony Simon Laden

Published in print: 2012-06-14

Most philosophical and social scientific work that discusses reason starts from a picture of reason that treats the activity of reasoning as a means of navigating our environment in the pursuit of various ends. This book offers an alternative, social picture of reasoning that pictures the activity of reasoning as a way of interacting with others that is reciprocal and responsive. On this picture, reasoning is to be contrasted with other forms of interaction, such as commanding or deferring. Reasoning is characterized as a social, ongoing activity that involves people inviting others to take what they say as speaking for them as well. So understood, it is a species of casual conversation, not primarily a form of calculation. Part I lays out the basic features of the social picture, and discusses the kind of authority it generates and the nature of casual conversation, of which reasoning is a form. Part II discusses the characteristic norms of three nested activities: casual conversation, reasoning and engaged reasoning. Part III discusses the principles that guide those reasoning as they respond to invitations that their reasoning partners make. These include principles that require attention to a form of self-preservation called integrity, and the connection between our ends and their means.

Most philosophers working in moral psychology and practical reason think that either the notion of “good” or the notion of “desire” have central roles to play in our understanding of intentional ...
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Most philosophers working in moral psychology and practical reason think that either the notion of “good” or the notion of “desire” have central roles to play in our understanding of intentional explanations and practical reasoning. However, philosophers disagree sharply over how we are supposed to understand the notions of ‘desire’ and ‘good’, how these notions relate, and whether both play a significant and independent role in practical reason. In particular, the “Guise of the Good” thesis — the view that desire (or perhaps intention, or intentional action) always aims at the good — has received renewed attention in the last twenty years. Can one have desire for things that the desirer does not perceive to be good in any, or form intentions to act in way that one does not deem to be good? Does the notion of good play any essential role in an account of deliberation or practical reason? Moreover, philosophers also disagree about the relevant notion of good. Is it a purely formal notion, or does it involve a substantive conception of the good? Is the primary notion, the notion of the good for a particular agent, or the notion of good simpliciter? Does the relevant notion of good make essential appeal to human nature, or would it in principle extend to all rational beings? While these questions are central in contemporary work in ethics, practical reason, and philosophy of action, they are not new; similar issues were discussed in the ancient period. The book aims to bring together “systematic” and more historically-oriented work on these issues.Less

Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good

Published in print: 2010-07-08

Most philosophers working in moral psychology and practical reason think that either the notion of “good” or the notion of “desire” have central roles to play in our understanding of intentional explanations and practical reasoning. However, philosophers disagree sharply over how we are supposed to understand the notions of ‘desire’ and ‘good’, how these notions relate, and whether both play a significant and independent role in practical reason. In particular, the “Guise of the Good” thesis — the view that desire (or perhaps intention, or intentional action) always aims at the good — has received renewed attention in the last twenty years. Can one have desire for things that the desirer does not perceive to be good in any, or form intentions to act in way that one does not deem to be good? Does the notion of good play any essential role in an account of deliberation or practical reason? Moreover, philosophers also disagree about the relevant notion of good. Is it a purely formal notion, or does it involve a substantive conception of the good? Is the primary notion, the notion of the good for a particular agent, or the notion of good simpliciter? Does the relevant notion of good make essential appeal to human nature, or would it in principle extend to all rational beings? While these questions are central in contemporary work in ethics, practical reason, and philosophy of action, they are not new; similar issues were discussed in the ancient period. The book aims to bring together “systematic” and more historically-oriented work on these issues.

The focus of deliberative democrats is ordinarily on deliberation in its ‘external‐collective’ aspect, but deliberation also has an ‘internal‐reflective’ aspect to it, which consists of the weighing ...
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The focus of deliberative democrats is ordinarily on deliberation in its ‘external‐collective’ aspect, but deliberation also has an ‘internal‐reflective’ aspect to it, which consists of the weighing of reasons for and against a course of action; in that sense, it can and ultimately must take place within the head of each individual, even in external‐collective settings. Deliberative democrats suppose that outcomes will be democratically legitimate only in so far as they emerge through external‐collective processes of deliberation involving a free and equal exchange among everyone who will be affected by them, and that ideal seems eminently feasible in small‐scale societies, but in large‐scale mass societies, they are not and cannot be. The challenge facing deliberative democrats is thus to find some way of adapting their deliberative ideals to large‐scale society, where it is not feasible to arrange face‐to‐face discussions across the entire community; solutions to that problem are not easily found. After briefly surveying various flawed attempts to rescue external‐collective forms of deliberative democracy from the problems of time, numbers, and distance, the author offers a counterproposal: that we ease the burdens of deliberative democracy in mass society by altering our focus from the ‘external‐collective’ to the ‘internal‐reflective’ mode, shifting much of the work of democratic deliberation to within the head of each individual; deliberation, on this account, is less a matter of making people ‘conversationally present’ and more a matter of making them ‘imaginatively present’ in the minds of deliberators. The different sections of the chapter are: Two Types of Deliberation; Unsuccessful Adaptations—[of deliberative democracy in large‐scale mass societies]; Another Approach: Deliberation Within; Dangers of Internal Deliberation; Informing the Democratic Imagination; and From Democratic Deliberation to Democratic Legitimacy.Less

Democratic Deliberation Within

Robert E. Goodin

Published in print: 2003-02-13

The focus of deliberative democrats is ordinarily on deliberation in its ‘external‐collective’ aspect, but deliberation also has an ‘internal‐reflective’ aspect to it, which consists of the weighing of reasons for and against a course of action; in that sense, it can and ultimately must take place within the head of each individual, even in external‐collective settings. Deliberative democrats suppose that outcomes will be democratically legitimate only in so far as they emerge through external‐collective processes of deliberation involving a free and equal exchange among everyone who will be affected by them, and that ideal seems eminently feasible in small‐scale societies, but in large‐scale mass societies, they are not and cannot be. The challenge facing deliberative democrats is thus to find some way of adapting their deliberative ideals to large‐scale society, where it is not feasible to arrange face‐to‐face discussions across the entire community; solutions to that problem are not easily found. After briefly surveying various flawed attempts to rescue external‐collective forms of deliberative democracy from the problems of time, numbers, and distance, the author offers a counterproposal: that we ease the burdens of deliberative democracy in mass society by altering our focus from the ‘external‐collective’ to the ‘internal‐reflective’ mode, shifting much of the work of democratic deliberation to within the head of each individual; deliberation, on this account, is less a matter of making people ‘conversationally present’ and more a matter of making them ‘imaginatively present’ in the minds of deliberators. The different sections of the chapter are: Two Types of Deliberation; Unsuccessful Adaptations—[of deliberative democracy in large‐scale mass societies]; Another Approach: Deliberation Within; Dangers of Internal Deliberation; Informing the Democratic Imagination; and From Democratic Deliberation to Democratic Legitimacy.